Foster care and adoption; toddlers to young adults; it's all here-- faith and humor meet as this mom of four chronicles the joy and heartbreak of motherhood.

Friday, March 5, 2004

March, 2004: Termination of Parental Rights

The
parental rights of our foster daughter’s biological parents have been
terminated. “Terminate” is a terrible word. Pregnancies are terminated. Jobs
are terminated. There’s no going back from terminated. No second chance. No
changing your mind.And much as I know
that Christa’s parents are in no position to care for her, it was still
difficult to hear the Court terminate their rights. I was thankful they were
not present to hear it, too. I was also thankful that one-year-old Christa will
have no memory of this day.She will
never hear the social worker, under oath, answer “No,” to the ten questions the
court posed regarding whether her biological parents ever provided the most
basic of care. Jamie has been in foster care since birth, and her biological
mother visited her just a few times before disappearing. It is completely
appropriate that the Court terminated her mother’s rights. But appropriate
doesn’t make it any less heartbreaking.

Jamie knows nothing of this. Nothing was
terminated about her day-to-day life.She yells, “Daddy!” when Bill walks in the door. Often, her first word
upon waking up from a nap is “IAMMM!” She can’t make the “L” sound for “Liam,”
so she just leaves it out entirely. When Jacob comes home from school, she
holds up her arms so he can pick her up. I have learned to walk rather
effectively with a small body wrapped around my leg, giggling. Jamie is so
much a part of our family that it’s hard to imagine that she had her start
outside of us.

But
she did have her start outside us. About six weeks into Jamie’s stay with us,
when she was 15 months old, our social worker set up a meeting with five of her
six biological siblings at Chuck E. Cheese. All of the children in the family
are in foster care or live with their respective biological fathers, but none
live with their mother. We have photos and a video of that meeting. Jamie ’s
older sister gave me pictures of their biological mother and grandmother. More
than anything, it is that day that I was thinking of in Court, when Jamie’s
parents’ rights were terminated. The reality of day-to-day family life and
complications of siblings living with so many different families, mean Jamie will never know them well as a child. The termination of Jamie’s parents’
rights, is also a de facto termination of a relationship with her biological
siblings — a termination of a sisterhood with three girls who have her
beautiful black curly hair and three brothers who have the same enormous brown
eyes.

When
our second foster daughter, Teenasia, left us, last year at this time, I
recognized in her leaving that while I could be happy that she was reunited
with her birth family, I could be sad for our loss. At the time, my pain was
deep and I thought that if I should ever some day be in a position to adopt a
foster child, I would feel nothing but joy. As we prepare to adopt Jamie next
month, I know now that is not the case. Joy I feel, definitely, joy. But also
within that joy, a tinge of sadness, for a family that could have been.

About Me

Annemarie writes locally and nationally on foster care, adoption, parenting and spirituality. She is responsible for the content in At Home with Our Faith (circulation 80,000), which has won the First Place award in its category from the Associated Church Press for three consecutive years. Her Training Wheels column has appeared in the Milwaukee Catholic Herald since 2002 and most of these blogs appeared first in her Training Wheels column or as a chapter of her book, Discovering Motherhood (Ambassador Press, 2006). She is married to Bill, with four children (two biological, two adopted), and works in a job-share position at Johnson Controls as director of Corporate Programs in Diversity and Public Affairs.